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Happy Dance in Virginia
Posted by Bigfoot on November 11th, 2009
John Muhammad, mastermind of the “beltway sniper” attacks that left 10 people dead in Maryland and Virginia in 2002, was executed at 9:00 PM Tuesday night, by lethal injection. He was convicted and sentenced to death in Virginia for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot at a gas station in Manassas.
“He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims,” said Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert, who witnessed Muhammad die by injection at 9:11 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center, south of Richmond. Muhammad, dressed in a blue shirt, jeans and flip-flops, had no final statement.
Until Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Malvo were apprehended at a rest stop in Maryland, the general public seemed unaware of how many perpetrators were involved in the attacks. Most news outlets simply refered to a “beltway sniper”, apparently assuming that only one gunman was involved. Some reports mentioned a white van being present near some of the places where the “sniper” struck, but their vehicle turned out to be a Chevrolet Caprice, its back seat able to fold downward to allow a person to enter the trunk from the inside the car, an arrangement also used during the 1990’s by terrorists in Northern Ireland. The gun was aimed through a hole in the trunk’s wall. Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the attacks, is serving a life sentence.
This execution of John Muhammad leaves me with two regrets. First, it’s too bad that Virginia law doesn’t allow execution by firing squad, and thus make the punishment fit the crime. Second, even though Muhammad has now undergone the most severe penalty possible, there is still no way he could ever have paid for all 10 of the lives that he and Malvo took. In that sense, true justice cannot be achieved.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I take solace in the fact that he is no longer spending tax dollars and that he’s no longer sucking down valuable oxygen….